


The Queen Says Let Them Eat Cake

by dexwebster



Category: Princess and the Frog (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:02:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dexwebster/pseuds/dexwebster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Tiana's opinion this royalty business isn't all it's cracked up to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Queen Says Let Them Eat Cake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blindmadness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindmadness/gifts).



Tiana's mama came in the front door with the basket of milk bottles and the mail tucked under her hand. 

She kissed Tiana's cheek where she stood at the stove frying up some eggs, and gave Naveen's shoulder a squeeze as she dropped the mail on the kitchen table in front of him. She'd been in a flurry all morning in a rush to the St. For house for a fitting for her daughter's wedding gown. 

Naveen sorted through the handful of envelopes, and pulled one out, frowning. It was fine, heavy paper, embossed with an elegant wax seal across the flap that faced Tiana as Naveen read the address.

"What is it?" 

Without answering he flipped it to open the seal, and Tiana saw for herself the calligraphy addressing it to His Royal Highness Prince Naveen and the stamp marking it as international mail. 

"My parents," Naveen said, frowning at the creamy, mottled stationary the letter was on. "They are, uh, rather forcefully requesting we visit Maldonia."

"I thought you wrote them a letter," Tiana said. It was one of the first things Naveen had done when he'd retrieved the few trunks that had survived Laurence's time impersonating him. "You explained everything, you said. Naveen, what did you tell them?" 

"I told them the truth! That I intend to spend the rest of my life with you, and as it is your dream to open a restaurant, I am determined to help you in that dream, and so I did not know when I would return to Maldonia to see them next. I included a brief note of your lineage, and informed them I had released Laurence for reasons I would explain another time. That is all."

" _That's all?_ " She pulled the letter from Naveen's hand to look herself, fat lot of good it did. _Liebe iben, sperana que est bene_. . . she threw it down on the table. "You told your family you ran away to America and fell in love with some—some _waitress_ and didn't expect them to do anything about it?"

"You could not expect me to tell them I met the love of my life while I was a frog and was married by a 197 year-old blind voodoo lady? Not in a _letter_. A royal wedding is an affair of state—"

Tiana bristled. "We are already married." 

"Of course we are, but you must understand, an affair of state must be publically recognized."

"If it was good enough to be recognized by a voodoo curse, it's good enough for me. And you could do better than making me sound like some floozy you're shacking up with. Lord, am I glad Mama already left." Eudora had taken it in stride when Tiana and Naveen told her the whole story, Shadow Man and warts and all. Her mama had lived in New Orleans long enough to trust in more than she could see with her eyes, and only cried with joy that Tiana had married something other than a kitchen. 

"Please." Naveen took her hands across the table and squeezed them. "We will go to Maldonia, and we will explain the whole situation in person. Since I, in a show of good character, have become determined to make my own way without the benefit of the cachet and fortune of the royal line—"

"Oh, is that what happened?" 

Naveen waved a hand. "Politics are a complicated matter, Tiana. Anyway, obviously we will be eager to return to our entrepreneurial affairs in America, so we will stay only long enough to have an engagement of a. . .a polite interval before a formal ceremony, and then return. Besides, this will give me an opportunity to figure out how to make the coffee from home. This—this chicory you call it, it is good. But _that_ —" Naveen kissed his fingers. "There are days when I wake up and think, 'I would give my left foot for a cup of this coffee right now.' Of course then I realize that without my left foot I could not dance, and no cup of coffee in the world is worth that, but you take my meaning."

"So when are we supposed to be doing this?"

"Sooner is obviously better than later—" Naveen said with a nervous laugh. 

"Naveen." 

"According to the letter the office will have the tickets for us. We leave next Tuesday."

* * *

Tiana was born and raised in the delta, and had seen the riverboats and barges chugging through the city for as long as she could remember. She had never been up real close to them, and couldn't have imagined how small they were next to the ocean liner she and Naveen approached on the docks. 

They had trunks and trunks of luggage between the two of them, more of her clothes than she'd ever had out of her closet at once, since the first-class tickets the king and queen had supplied them with meant dinner aboard was evening gowns and tuxedos (thank heavens for Charlotte LaBouff's extensive wardrobe).

Tiana hadn't had this much nothing to do since she'd been tall enough to see over the edge of the stove without standing on a chair. They could read in the ship's library, or lounge on the deck or in their cabin, and as Naveen was quick to point out there was always chatting with the other passengers. Of course that was easy for him to say when he was handsome and charming and didn't have some stuffed shirt telling him he needed fresh linens because he'd assumed Tiana was the help, even sitting in the first class lounge.

If she thought the ship was big, it had nothing on how small she felt standing when Naveen brought her up to the rail to looking into the ocean. There was nothing but water as far as the eye could see once they were out in the gulf, before they'd even passed Florida. 

"That way is New Orleans," he said. "Er, maybe that way. And that way is Maldonia." 

"So where _is_ Maldonia?"

Naveen drew her hand up with his and sighted along them out at the horizon. "Right about there."

"But I don't where it _is_. I hardly even know where we're going," 

"Here, I will show you." And he turned her hand over and began tracing the knob of her wrist to show where they now sailed.

He stroked over the mound of her thumb; Bermuda, where they would stop to resupply before crossing the Atlantic. He pointed out the tiny speck of Maldonia in the Mediterranean on an old, pale scar from a burn, and the dip of African coastline where his grandmother's family was from before she married into _this_ duchy along the crease of her pinky. _This_ , he stroked along her palm, was where his uncle's vineyards sat. That was Monaco, a wonderful place they would see together some day, if perhaps with a little less zeal than his last visit there.

There was a warm feeling blooming in Tiana's stomach at the same time her head got light, like she should put her head between her knees. She closed her eyes, feeling her stomach swim in a way that reminded her of their first night on board. 

"Are you all right?"

"I forget sometimes." It was hard to say. "You really are a prince."

Naveen lifted a shoulder. "And you are a princess." 

"You had tutors and servants and you travel." Tiana turned, moving in his arms as if to bolt, but Naveen held firm onto the rail on both sides of her. 

"Why are you so suddenly worried? I have been a prince since we met."

"Being on this ship, I guess. Seeing all those people at dinner." She'd spent her whole life with people telling her she was different, that she wouldn't be good enough. She'd never felt it so much before. How many oceans had Naveen crossed?

"Who has told you this?"

How did he know her so well when they'd only known each other a matter of weeks? "It wasn't—it was just some man. He thought I was one of the maids and—Naveen, I'm not like them."

"And I'm grateful for it."

"You're a _prince_. What if your parents don't want anything to do with me?"

"My darling, my mother and father will adore you, as anyone in their right mind would. And even if they didn't? Feh." Naveen waved a hand airily. "Being disowned would save me a lot of trouble. I already dread attempting to convince you to leave New Orleans if I were to become king. And we will always have the restaurant." He turned her back by the hips to face the railing, and gave another wave of his hand to set the tableau over the glittering waves. "I see it now. Louis will strike fear into the hearts of all who oppose you, as long as no one mentions hunters. I of course will be the devastatingly handsome and charming host. And you will rule with an iron skillet, the queen of your own palace, your adoring subjects begging for beignet crumbs."

"You are too charming by half," Tiana said, but she leaned back against his chest, and thought maybe she would, as long as she had Naveen at her back.

* * *

Naveen of course spent had spent his time making friends with everyone he could talk to; the quiet afternoon Tiana spent reading he'd persuaded the musicians to let him sit in with his ukelele. 

At dinner in the ballroom that same night, Naveen returned to the table from saying hello to someone he'd met the day before, and sat down, shellshocked. "That is an interminably boring and slimy man." He pointed, not at the couple he'd gone to say hello to, but another man, who had a shiny everything: patent shoes and a shiny bald head and ruddy, shiny face, big rings and an extravagantly long chain on the pocket watch tucked into his vest, which had jeweled buttons.

"Ugh," Tiana said. "He's the one I told you about." 

Naveen's lips pursed. "I see." He made no mention of it after that, but when they small string ensemble ended their set, he stood from his chair, and gestured for Tiana to follow.

"Naveen, I don't know these people." 

They made a beeline for the band, where the obnoxious man who'd accosted Tiana was doing the same to the poor bandleader.

"Tiana, please allow me to introduce you to this wonderful gentleman," Naveen said right over top of him. "Oh, forgive me, I've hardly introduced myself. I am Prince Naveen, of Maldonia, and this is my fianceé Tiana, as I told you. Albert ever so graciously allowed me to sit in with them yesterday on deck! They are sublime musicians, wasted here entirely. If I could steal them away from the ship I would have them at the wedding," Naveen said. "Oh, and that's Wilbur."

The man had gone fish-belly white everywhere he wasn't florid red. "Actually, it's Wilf—"

"It's a pleasure," Tiana said as she shook the bandleader's hand. "Naveen couldn't say enough about y'all yesterday. Spent all day talking about it."

"Your highness, it's good to—"

"Bert," Naveen said, "may I request a waltz to start the next set, if you please? On the slow side." 

"Naveen, you know I can't dance," Tiana said, though it was mostly for show now. "That's the whole reason you got me over here isn't it?"

"How else will you learn?" Naveen wiggled his hand at her enticingly, coaxing, sing-song. "Better here than a first dance at the wedding." 

Tiana put her hand in his and followed him. She waited until they were well out onto the floor to look up at him. "Why did you do that?"

"He was rude to you, and to Albert," Naveen said, as serious as she'd ever heard him. "I've learned a lesson or two about finding the worth in even the smallest of us. Even a firefly, no?"

* * *

She spent the rest of the trip with Naveen occasionally bowing to her and calling her things like the future queen, and she was so caught up in the joke that she'd all but forgotten her worries until the straits of Gibraltar came into view, only specks on the horizon to start, then bigger and bigger, until they loomed over the ship. 

The port didn't look so different from where they'd embarked in New Orleans, the same hustle and bustle and smell of salt. 

Tiana hissed, "There is a _car_ waiting for us."

"Yes," Naveen said, "Gerald's a very nice fellow." 

Maldonia was the kind of place that looked like it didn't know what it wanted to be. There were quaint looking half-timbered houses next to bright terra cotta, aging cobblestones paving roads lined with new red brick. 

A tweedy, officious looking little man with wispy blond hair stood beside the drive at the palace wearing what looked like a blue and green military uniform.

The driver let them out of the car, and the man bowed to Naveen. "Your highness," he said. "His majesty has requested you be informed that he and the queen are meeting with the ambassador from France and his wife, and will not be present to receive you until tomorrow morning."

Naveen sighed. "Of course, Pelham." Tiana squeezed his arm a little. Naveen didn't look up, just followed after Pelham.

"The king's birthday celebration is to be held at the end of the week, your engagement is to be announced then," he said. He led them through what seemed like a maze to Tiana, halls the size of cathedrals with heavy red drapes on the walls. Her shoes clicked on the polished floor. She'd known they were going to a palace, that it was going to put even the biggest houses in New Orleans to shame, but this was like something out of a picture book. 

They wound up in a smaller hallway, one with a lush, ornate rug running the length, and Pelham led them to an open doorway. "You will of course be staying in the south wing. I will show you to your rooms momentarily. As a first order of business," he said, turning neatly on his heel for lack of a door to open, "I believe there is someone who would like to see you." 

"Ralphie!" Tiana had seldom heard Naveen sound so purely joyful, and for someone as good-natured as he was that was saying something. 

A little boy sprang up from the table he'd been sitting at and cried, "Naveen!" He took a running leap into Naveen's waiting arms, and Naveen scooped him up and spun him in a wild circle. They finally settled with the boy sitting at Naveen's hip, still swaying dizzily.

"Tiana, my younger brother, Raphael. Ralphie, this is Tiana." 

A woman had risen from the table, much more sedately than her charge, and stood to the side with her hands behind her back. 

"Your highness," she said with a polite nod, and then another towards Tiana. "I'm Elizabeth Hollingsworth, miss. Master Raphael's governess." She had the same clipped British accent Laurence had. "Prince Naveen, we hadn't expected you. I was given to understand your mother and father won't be returning until tomorrow," and Naveen looked down. 

"Yes, Pelham's just told us." 

"Is she the girl you're gonna marry?" Ralphie said. "Mama and Papa said you were coming back home so they could make you get married."

"Er, something like that," Naveen said. 

"I certainly am," Tiana said, with a wry look at Naveen. "And it is a pleasure to meet you, Ralphie."

Miss Hollingsworth eventually took Ralphie away for his lessons and bath and dinner, which the four of them ate in an enormous long dining room together.

Because that's how it was here. There were servants everywhere. Servants to open doors, servants to close doors, servants to deliver food and dust the mantelpiece and some poor souls who were supposed to teach Tiana how to behave like a princess. How to sit and say hello and eat and be polite the right way, even to very loud dressmakers who were sure to let everyone know that it was very irregular to be making a gown on such late notice. In Tiana's experience people were willing to do just about anything if you threw enough money at it, and that was without a royal seal to back it up, but Lefevre apparently did not believe in doing it quietly.

"I know these are trying circumstances for you, M. Lefevre," said a new voice, a woman, but low and rich with an accent Tiana couldn't place. She had so many straight pins tacked all around her she couldn't so much as hiccup let alone look over her shoulder to see the owner. "I'm sure you will perform to the best of your ability," the woman continued.

"Obviously!" Lefevre said. His eyes had gone wide, and he fumbled a bit with the tape measure in his hand, twitching his little mustache fitfully. Tiana felt a little more pleasure at his sudden attack of nerves than was strictly necessary, what with the way he'd been bossing her around. 

"I understand completely if you'd prefer we approach another coutourier instead. Pelham, please make a note to write to Madame Fleuri about—" 

"That won't be necessary at all, your majesty," Lefevre said.

" _Excellent_ ," said Queen Madihah, and that was how Tiana met her in-laws.

* * *

Naveen came and went as he pleased during these lessons, and that was how Naveen found her one afternoon he wandered in: flustered and arguing with the unfortunate underbutler tasked with getting her to lay her fork and knife on her plate to properly indicate her plate could be taken, because apparently there was a _proper way_ to do that. There was a _proper_ way to do everything, and a proper fork to do it with. 

Naveen ushered the butler out and pulled Tiana into a hug, tucking her head under his chin. He was broad and warm and she clung to him gratefully. "Why won't they just let me _cook_ a six-course dinner?" she said, muffled against him. "I know how to do that. I've never had to _eat_ one."

"Let them have their dinner. But for now," he said, and his voice dropped to a whisper, "Come with me," and he held his hand out to lead her into the hall. 

"Where are we going?"

"Treasure-hunting. Shh." Naveen pulled her against him as he ducked into an alcove behind a suit of armor, out of sight of the butler she'd battled, who still stood at the far end. "We are sneaking out," Naveen said. "It is a very dangerous proposition. Are you ready?" 

He sounded deadly serious, but his eyes were sparkling, and she felt a flutter in her stomach that was familiar and too distant at the same time, an old friend she'd missed in all this craziness. She slipped her hand in his and squeezed. They ducked from nook to nook to the end of the hall, where a towering triptych of pastoral scenes loomed on the wall. Naveen pushed at the side of the leftmost one to reveal a stone-walled corridor behind it. 

"Servants' passage," Naveen whispered. "I used to hide here as a boy." He crept into the dark corridor, pulling the hatch closed behind them, and for a moment Tiana was blinded, anchored only by Naveen's hand in hers. As her eyes adjusted she could see it was lit very dimly by the light peeking in around other entryways and mounts for the larger fixtures anchored to the old stonework through the plaster. They emerged in another, much drabber hallway, one without the armor and royal portraits. It was a quick hop down that to make it to a door to the vegetable garden in the rear of the palace. She was giggling and giddy following Naveen through the maze of pole beans taller than him, up to another door of old burnished wood and dark, heavy hinges, nothing like the ornate entrances she'd seen in the foyer and courtyard. 

The floor beside the door they entered was stacked high with sacks of flour. Tiana got a good look at the full wood countertops bustling with nearly a dozen people in double-breasted chef coats and realized they'd gone through all of that to sneak into the delivery entrance in the palace kitchens. 

"Oh, Naveen." She took a few steps forward, and ran her hand along the mantle above an ancient stone fireplace as tall as she was and wider than she could reach with both hands, blackened with what must have been centuries of use as a cookfire in a time before the gleaming gas ranges, or even wood cookstoves like the one she'd grown up with. 

"This is like finding treasure for you, isn't it?" Naveen said, low in her ear. "And, no, you are not allowed to cater your own wedding." 

Before she could argue that she wasn't even going to ask—though she wouldn't deny the temptation—a man built like a pickle-barrel lumbered up. He was in a coat too, though his was pristine white and matched by a toque blanche.

"Jean-Pierre!" Naveen cried. "There you are! How long has it been?" 

The head chef's mouth twisted, twitching a bristly gray mustache. "Since I've seen you or since you last snuck in like a thief in the night to pilfer my pastries?" He spoke with an accent that gave Tiana a pang of homesickness for the soft Acadian vowels of the French Quarter.

"Such a fine line," Naveen said. "Either way is of no matter. There are much more important things to worry about right now, and at any rate I have a new supplier. This," he announced, "is Tiana, my fiancee and _the_ finest chef in New Orleans." 

"High praise coming from a stomach like yours, highness." Jean-Pierre took Tiana's hand and bowed neatly over it with practiced, easy politeness, not the stiff formality of so many of the staff. " _Enchanté_ , mademoiselle."

"I was hoping," Naveen said, in his most charming voice, "that maybe you could possibly. . .give Tiana a tour of the kitchens?"

"You do know we are preparing for a 150-head banquet tomorrow, don't you?"

"Of course, of course," Naveen said. "It is only that Tiana's the only person I have met whose love for cooking rivals your own, and we are in desperate need of refuge from the preparations for that exact banquet."

Jean-Pierre's eyes narrowed at that. "A moment, _s'il vous plaît_." 

Naveen waited for Jean-Pierre to head off before he whispered, "If the man has a true nemesis it is wishy-washy party planners." 

"I like him already."

He returned not even a moment later, trailing a pale, sharp-featured young man he introduced as his sous-chef, Michel. Unlike Jean-Pierre, he was skinny enough that he looked like a reed bending in the wind when he bowed. 

They were interrupted a handful of times by underlings approaching Jean-Pierre, either in French or what she'd begun to recognize as Maldonian. Otherwise the kitchen bustled along efficiently. Everyone knew their work. It was a large, active, and very well-run kitchen, and it put a giddy little lump in her stomach: her place would be like this too, she'd make sure of it. She took in everything Jean-Pierre told her, the pantries, the way the cooks were organized. The kinds of things she'd only read about. 

She was fascinated by the gas ranges and ovens, which she'd only seen pictures of, and that they still used wood stoves too. Jean-Pierre puffed up a little with pride. "The gas is a blessing for baking. Wood is still best for stocks, as it can be banked and left overnight with no danger." He bent over an enormous pot where bones the size of Tiana's fists lay simmering amid vegetable scraps. "These will be a demi-glace for the Beef Wellington tomorrow, a particular favorite of the king," he said. "Your highness, please leave some dessert for the rest of the guests, hmm?"

"Eyes in the back of his head, I swear it," Naveen said, standing from where he was bending over racks of puff pastry shells. 

"Keep your sticky fingers to yourself and he won't have to," Tiana said. 

"You are on his side? I am so betrayed!"

She shook her head. "Cooks gotta stick together."

After they'd seen the whole kitchen and spent some time talking French cuisine—he had _met_ Auguste Escoffier!—Jean-Pierre begged his leave.

"Mademoiselle," he said with the same easy politeness, "please return any time. We must talk more of this Creole." 

"Of course," Tiana said.

"I suppose we should head back to the inquisitors before Le Chef slips me something," Naveen said.

"Pff. As if I would sacrifice the integrity of my food, your highness. You know me better than that."

In the empty hall just outside the kitchen doors--the front one--Tiana pulled at Naveen's hand to turn him towards her. "Thank you." She wasn't nearly so much like a pot about to boil over, and she felt a lot braver heading to her final dress fitting the next morning with Naveen at her side. 

She'd helped her mother enough times over the years to play mannequin with the best of them while Lefévre pinned her gown on. Tiana wasn't much good for this hurry up and wait stuff, but she was going to have one heck of a kitchen.

She spared a look at Naveen, who'd leaned his shoulder against the wall and kicked one foot up. And he was watching her. Lefévre fluffed at the hem of her dress and clucked unhappily. When she looked up again Naveen still had the same smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, the same playfulness in those warm brown eyes. 

She'd fallen in love with him as a frog; how handsome he was as a man still managed to shock her some times. It was easy to see how all those girls he'd talked about could be so taken with him, even if they didn't know how generous and sweet he was.  
Tiana felt her cheeks flush and looked down, grateful it didn't show too much. She wasn't a pot set to boil anymore, but filled with a different kind of heat, and her mind was certainly other places for the rest of the fitting. 

"You are terrible," she said when Lefévre had finally released her.

"What?" Naveen said.

"Distracting me!"

"From where I stood looked like you could use a little distraction," he said, jauntily offering her his arm. 

Tiana sighed and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. "Too charming by half."

"That's prince too charming by half, thank you."

"So what's that make me?" 

"As I keep telling you, you will be the queen of Tiana's Palace."

If she got to have this, all that royalty business was a small price to pay. "I suppose it does have a nice ring to it."


End file.
